The invention relates to flexible channel-shaped guiding, sealing and finishing strips for use as draft excluding seals, beadings, or window channels, flange finishers (for covering welded flanges, for example), and the like. Such strips may hereinafter be referred to generically as "sealing strips", and are particularly, though not exclusively, for use in vehicle bodies.
It is known to make such channel-shaped strips by covering a metal "carrier" with flexible material such as plastics or rubber, as by extrusion. The metal carrier advantageously comprises a series of side-by-side generally U-shaped elements.
It is also known to interconnect the carrier elements to each other by means of short connecting links.
Such connecting links of course hold the carrier elements together while they are covered with the flexible covering material, but in the finished sealing strip they restrict its flexibility to some extent.
Another disadvantage of the connecting links is that they almost completely preclude the possibility of stretching or compressing the sealing strip lengthwise in use such as, for example, to take up tolerances on a vehicle body on which it is being fitted.
It is therefore also known to arrange the connecting links so that they are broken or removed after the process of covering the carrier elements with the flexible covering material. The absence of the connecting links in the finished product gives it considerably enhanced flexibility. However, it does have the disadvantage that the carrier elements are no longer positively located with reference to each other. When the sealing strip is bent around a curve, for example, this means that there is no positive location for the neutral bending axis and unsatisfactory bending may occur.
It is therefore an object of the invention to provide an improved sealing strip and an improved method of making such a sealing strip.
A more specific object of the invention is to provide a sealing strip in which the elements of the carrier thereof are interconnected to each other and thus positively located relative to each other but in a way which does not unduly restrict the flexibility, compressibility and stretchability of the sealing strip.